A long-standing portrait of a former North Carolina supreme court justice has been removed from the Orange County courthouse.

Superior Court Judge Carl R. Fox requested the removal of Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Ruffin’s portrait “because of his racist past and his participation in slave trading and slave ownership.”

The county manager’s office has since complied with his request.

A push for the portrait’s removal came after research conducted by UNC law professor Eric Muller and Commissioner Sally Greene was published in 2018. Muller and Greene did extensive work studying Ruffin’s life and, in turn, revealed the truth about how he conducted his life as a slave master.

Thomas Ruffin is traditionally celebrated as “thorough improvement man.” He was chief justice from 1833 to 1852 and swiftly gained popularity while pushing for economic progress. But there was an underbelly to his success.

Muller and Greene’s research helped to uncover Ruffin’s State v. Mann ruling – dated back in 1829. This ruling gave enslavers “virtually unlimited powers of discipline.” In the words of Ruffin, “The power of the master must be absolute, to render the submission of the slave perfect.”

This language was broadly circulated, licensing extreme physical abuse, according to their research.

According to Muller and Greene’s 2018 opinion piece on the subject, Ruffin secretly partnered with a South Carolina man in a speculative slave trading business. Muller and Greene say that Ruffin’s personal life also “indicates little respect for enslaved people.” It is reported that Ruffin once took a cane to an enslaved woman who had come on to his property without permission.

Another portrait of Ruffin has hung in a place of prominence in the North Carolina Supreme Court since 1888. On the third floor of the Law and Justice Building in Raleigh, the portrait sits framed between two grandiose columns – three times the size of any other portrait.

A committee named by Chief Justice Cheri Beasley is in the process of considering the appropriate disposition for this and the other portraits in the Court’s collection, according to Orange County government. They are expected to continue deliberations through the end of 2020.

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